1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to a loose-leaf folder, and in particular to a loose-leaf folder device with separation and recombination function.
2. Relevant Background
In today's technology-driven society, the physical recording and storing of information are becoming more digitalized. Although digitization of information is generally considered more environmentally-friendly and easier to store and share, there still exists a major setback in functionality and user experience. When a user wants to review and compare different pages of the same file on an electronic device simultaneously, or compare separate files respectively in a side-by-side view, the user's reading is usually limited by the screen size and the system operation of the electronic device. In addition, reviewing content on an electronic device for an extended period of time, which is common for important information, can cause discomfort and strain to the reader's eyes. Therefore, many people still prefer using traditional loose-leaf folders to review and store articles, paper documents, or the like.
Traditional loose-leaf folders have many models. For the popular loose-leaf ring folder, a retaining ring device is arranged in the middle position, so loose-leaf paper can be inserted into or drawn out when the retaining ring device is open, and when the retaining ring device is closed, loose-leaf paper is bound and the page order fixed in the folder. Although this characteristic allows a user to organize and store material, in terms of reviewing and comparing material in a flexible manner, traditional loose-leaf folders still lack the core functionality in allowing users to review and compare different, nonconsecutive loose-leaf pages in a folder simultaneously in a side-by-side view.
Specifically, if a user wishes to compare different loose-leaf pages when the traditional folder's retaining ring device is closed, for example, to compare pages 3 and 19, the user would likely need to flip back and forth between the two pages, as the user cannot review two nonconsecutive pages at the same time. Therefore, one approach is opening the retaining ring device of the loose-leaf folder, drawing out one page, closing the retaining ring device, turning to the other corresponding page to perform a side-by-side view comparison, then inserting back the drawn page to the loose-leaf folder. Such approach commonly requires the user to notice or mark the position of the drawn loose-leaf page in advance, to prevent the loose-leaf folder from losing sequential order when inserting back the drawn loose-leaf page after comparison.
Another common comparison method is drawing out partial sections consisting of stack of paper from the loose-leaf folder entirely, reviewing and comparing unbounded pages individually, then inserting the drawn loose-leaf pages back to the loose-leaf folder entirely. However, such method requires the user to maintain the order of the whole stack of loose-leaf pages when the loose-leaf pages are unbound. In addition, if the whole stack of loose-leaf pages has a certain degree of thickness, the positioning of the punched hole of individual loose-leaf pages can easily become irregular as a paper stack, especially when certain loose-leaf pages within the stack are manually hole-punched resulting in non-uniformed positioning of the sheet holes. As such, inserting loose-leaf paper stack with non-uniformed positioning of sheet holes back to the retaining ring device could lead to possible tearing and damage of loose-leaf sheet holes.